Need help as Disc

Hey guys recently i have rerolled over to my priest to heal since its a more fun and challenging way of playing and i enjoyed it more than playing my rogue anyway basically im not a bad disc priest but not a good one either i just need some help with some things. We did Baleroc the other night and in my state of gear i think i did pretty well just above the druid on 14K HPS but my mana was going down like crazy.
I know theres ways of regaining mana shadowfiend/HoH but thats still not enough is there an effective way of conversing mana?

Right now im Attonement spec but i rarely cast smite/holy fire as i dont usually have much time to do it i enjoy this spec more than the other 1s so if anyone could help me out id appreciate it.

what am i doing wrong? ive read up for countless hours and watched alot of videos but not much is helping

Well, one thing is, how was your mana on the bosses up to baleroc? Can you post an armory link? There is plenty of time to get off smite/holyfire on Baleroc when your not shard healing as the tank should be the one getting the heals. If anything, just cast holy fire on CD will get you your Archangel buff which will give back 5% mana and also 15% healing so that might allow you to use a more efficient heal.

its not letting me post my armoury yet because i just joined but my mana was ok i think i had like 13% left at the end of the fight and that was non stop healing without the use of smite/holy fire i know the AA buff gives me 5% mana back but that isnt really enough maybe its my gear at this level because right now my gear sucks its a mixture of 358 tier and ZA/ZG

Watch PW:S usage. You want it for Rapture and it's a life saver but if you're using it too much it will drain your mana. Also I'm using Core of Ripeness and I find it's a fantastic mana return (not sure about your trinkets), but try and time it with Int procs.

Also if you aren't using atonement, you could try an SoS/ToT build.

Edit - Yeah your gear could be the issue, especially 358 since that would be PVP gear, would it not?

sorry i meant 359 gear i have 1 piece of pvp gear yeah but that wouldnt be an issue, my trinkets are crap just to let you know >.< so nothing to proc from i need to find an addon that can track rapture for me but i dont understand someone told me i can pop off 2-3 shields and if they get dispelled in between each other i would get a lot of mana back is this true? sorry im not that familiar with rapture atm but i know it says every 12 seconds

if you throw out 3 shield and all 3 break at same time, you will only get mana from the 1st one since rapture only procs once every 12 seconds. I personally only use PW:S for rapture and if someone dips real low, otherwise I use attonement/penance/greater heal. If I am tank healing, I keep PoM on CD, spam smite/holy fire til I need to gheal and don't even use penance on tank usually as I use it to spot heal other raid members (except like baleroc ofc). http://us.battle.net/wow/en/characte...owbombs/simple is my armory if want to look at.

I use a rapture addon that reminds me that rapture can proc again. Also for baleroc I have a OS with SoS, I don't smite on Baleroc.

Smiting needs a different mindset, you are more active. you smite/holyfire to get arch angel up and to heal during low damage phases. While smiting you keep shield on the tank and POM on cooldown (glyphed). When damage goes up, pop Arch angel and use greater heal for high tank damage, or prayer of healing for raid damage, when things get really dodgy: flash heal, pain suppression. arch angel will regen mana for you with this specc.

A non-smite specc needs SoS, you will focus on the weakend soul debuf on the tank and shield the tank as soon as the debuff drops off. You will be less active in low damage phases, your shields will soak a large proportion of the damage and you will use greater heal when tank drops to about 80%-ish, by the time the greater heal is cast the tank's HP will have dropped a bit lower so you will not over heal that much. Your greater heal will lower the time of the weakend soul debuff, and you can shield again shortly after the greater heal. A larger proportion of your regen will be from rapture compared to a smite specc.

What I understand from your question is that your playstyle resembles the non-smite playstyle but you have a smite spec. You lose regen of archangel and you cannot optimally regen with rapture because you cannot shorten the weakend soul debuff. You can either change playstyle or change spec imo.

1. if you have mana problems, spec mana-friendly talents, like veiled shadows.

2. also think of your output - sacrificing 5% of the output of each of your direct heals (empowered healing)? why? is desperate prayer that worth it, are you dying that much? (to everyone else, we do talk about raiding 2 bosses on normal modes here, talents can be rearranged later on, with more progress/gear/skills)

3. no 2-piece set bonus. i see valors wand and wrist, but not tier items. should went for the chest and really there is no point to wait for pants or gloves to drop from bh.

4. 40 spirit gem. 40 haste gem. 20mastery+20spirit gem. all wrong. never pick a gem without intellect. intellect is your strongest stat, both for mana and output, and you nerf yourself by picking gems without it.

about your game play, which i only can guess, here are some obvious things:
a) are you spamming flash heals? if so, stop
b) are you spamming shields and have huge overhealing with shields? (can be checked on wol) if so, stop. i see you have stacked mastery, pity not to have sos spec, so your gear and talents would support each other.
c) do you have inner focus macroed to your greater heal and poh?

last point, if you barely have time to make use of atonement spec, which part of it you enjoy so much?
drop it, learn to play without it, pick it up again when you need some entertainment.
atm even on majordomo hc atonement is nothing more than just a bit of entertainment, there is not even one fight where it could be called must-have.

Yeah I don't mean never use PW:S, it's a great spell but you can't toss it around like it's candy. Best spell if you see incoming damage and definitely on your tanks but if a lot of people need shielding, switch to Prayer of Healing and if the player has already taken the damage then just gheal them.

There are a few things to look at. Firstly, Baleroc is a very, VERY mana intensive fight for healers (assuming you 2 healed the fight). You're likely burning a lot of many with FL when you're healing shard-soakers and healing the tank early in the fight with no buff is also pretty intense. On a more controlled fight, you won't notice the problems so much.

Things you can do to help.
1.) Talents: Consider specing into Surge of Light instead of Desperate Prayer and definitely pick up the 3rd point in Empowered Healing. In situations that require self healing, Binding Heal is probably better since you get 2 effective heals from it. You won't frequently find situations where only you, as a healer, are taking damage. Surge is a low proc chance, but strangly seems to proc from itself more than you would expect, so you'll get 2 free FL's back to back.

Secondly, mastery stacking, which you seem to be doing, will be more beneficial with Strength of Soul build instead of Atonement. If you stay with Atonement, just make sure you keep your Evangelism stacks up, then use Archangel when you need to do heavy healing (also gives decent mana return once per minute). SoS will let you put more shields on the tank and give you more time to just use spot heals (Heal/GH) on your raid.

2.) When single-target healing, try using more GH over FL. The fast heals are good if you really need them, but GH is more efficient and a larger heal, assuming you can afford the cast time.

3.) Only use PoM when you can be reasonably sure of a minimum 3 jumps. It tends to be hit or miss on a Baleroc-esc fight because it might jump to a target who isn't going to be hit again for its duration, and 3-4 charges are wasted. Its excellent on burst-AoE fights when you can get 5 jumps instantly (Domo, Beth, Rhyo, Alys). Also, be sure you don't immediately 'cover' your PoM target with a shield (either aegis or pw:s), as it will not jump while incoming damage is being absorbed.

4.) On fights that require AoE healing, PoH should be your go-to weapon. Make sure you don't overuse it though, let the HoT and divine aegis do their work and don't waste time overhealing. This is another mana-heavy heal, so be careful with it.

5.) Gearing: as mentioned by babylon, don't skip on intellect gems. Get 20int with 20spi/20hast/20mastery instead of +40 off stat gems. For red sockets, you should be using +40 intellect ALWAYS.

thank you so much for the help ive respecced out of attonement now as most people say its not recommended for hardmodes ive took all posts into constructive critcism and built off it ill get there eventually thanks again!